The Stranger: Part 2, Chapter 3
TGC Blog | June 19, 2012
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Part 1, Chapter 2
- Part 1, Chapter 3
- Part 1, Chapter 4
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Part 2, Chapter 1
- Part 2, Chapter 2
**********
Plot summary: The subject of this long chapter is the first day of Meursault's trial. We are never allowed to lose sight of the fact that it is a hot day. The events that make up the chapter are familiar to any real-life or fictional trial: entry of the accused into the courtroom, a panorama of various people and groups in the courtroom, the official protocol of calling witnesses, questioning by lawyers, interspersed commentary by lawyers, gradual assembling of data by the prosecution. Storytellers love courtroom scenes because of the human drama they contain, and Camus "works" the situation to the maximum by inventing a long trial scene. Not wishing to become interpretive in this brief plot summary, I will nonetheless note that this chapter has a hidden plot conflict in addition to the obvious conflict between the accused and the prosecutor. It is the conflict between how Meursault experienced the events covered in part one of the novel and the sinister and fanciful twist that the prosecutor places on those events.
Courtroom Drama
The courtroom trial genre of chapter three is well-defined and extremely popular. From one point of view, the courtroom trial has all the ingredients of a good story. The essence of plot is conflict, and in a trial scene the conflict is a variation on the martial theme of single combat, as the focus of hostility is the interaction between the accused (the defendant) and the accuser (the prosecutor). The stakes of combat---life and death---are momentous.
Other plot staples are also highlighted in trial scenes. The elements of suspense and surprise explode in a good trial scene. When the trial begins, we have no clear picture of what evidence will emerge and what interpretations will be placed on it. We are repeatedly surprised. But what if we already know the eventual verdict? In his classic essay "On Stories," C. S. Lewis used the formula "ideal surprisingness" to name a quality of stories like Little Red Ridinghood to denote a perpetual quality of surprise in good suspense stories. Additionally, all good trial scenes have something of the riddle at their core.
Good plots possess a quality of discovery that gradually unfolds with events. Things keep changing. As readers, we begin chapter three assuming that we know everything about Meursault and the murder, but in fact we learn a fair amount of new information as the chapter progresses. We experience the novel along with the first-person narrator, and if we follow Meursault's account of the trial we can see that he, too, discovers a lot: people in the courtroom loathe him, and the prosecutor is manipulating the evidence in ways that could not have been imagined.
In addition to all of the riches of plot that I have been noting, we can consider the characters in this courtroom drama. They are vividly portrayed and varied. Storytellers love battle and courtroom stories because they allow for the portrayal of character under pressure. The characterization of the prosecutor is a story all by itself, and his chief trait is cleverness in manipulating data.
Courtroom protocol is yet another level of excitement in a trial scene. The list is extensive: entry of persons, call to order, choosing of the jury, reporters with fountain pens poised, preliminary questioning of the defendant, calling and questioning of witnesses, responses of observers, addressing of the jury, and so on.
For a reader eager to get to the "message" of this novel, my emphasis on the dynamics of plot and characterization might seem a trivial exercise. But it is not. One of the purposes of literature is to be entertaining and provide the materials for rewarding leisure. There is more to chapter three than what I have covered, but that is where we need to start, and not to feel apologetic about enjoying a really good trial scene.
For reflection or discussion: All I have done so far is name the ingredients of a good courtroom story; the payoff comes when we are aware of those elements as we read. What are the noteworthy instances of conflict, suspense, surprise, and discovery that you relish? How does Camus exploit the resources of characterization? What draws you into this episode?
Clever Prosecutor
I propose that the central character of chapter three is the prosecutor. Once the trial gets started, he instigates the action. We first notice his assertiveness in pursuing an apparently pre-planned line of inquiry designed to yield a guilty verdict. He pushes witnesses around under his relentless questioning. He is like Iago in Shakespeare's Othello in stage-managing characters, getting them to do what he wants.
In addition to this assertiveness, the prosecutor is adept at distorting evidence. Later I will theorize about what Camus intends with the prosecutor's line of reasoning, but for the moment I would like my readers to go with the flow of what unfolds. I don't think the prosecutor is devoted to uncovering the truth. He seems rather to be engaged in a personal vendetta against Meursault. For readers who agree, the dynamic of what is happening is one that storytellers often employ. Camus creates a situation in which readers or spectators want to intervene and rein in a character who is in the process of destroying someone. The more we feel a need to do so and simultaneously feel our own helplessness, the more the story exerts its power over us.
I am claiming a deviousness about the prosecutor. Yet there is complexity even in this. It is entirely just that Meursault be found guilty. He is a murderer and deserves to be punished. Why, then, does the prosecutor build a case on irrelevant details? Because Camus has a philosophic or worldview agenda that he is pushing.
For reflection or discussion: I have presented my view of the prosecutor. I invite my readers to record their "take" on the prosecutor.
Absurdist Worldview from a New Angle
In my commentary on part one, I repeatedly offered Meursault as an absurd hero---a protagonist who embodies an absurdist view of life. Camus himself accorded Meursault a much fuller definition of hero. In the introduction to an American edition of the novel that I referenced in earlier articles, Camus expressed his view that Meursault is "heroic" and someone who "agrees to die for the truth."
At several earlier points I also asserted that a double judgment arises in us as we read---against Meursault but also against his society. But until now the judgment against Meursault's society is a verdict on its moral depravity and evil. Something new enters with chapter three.
It now emerges that more than Meursault is absurd; so is his society. We get the same message from two angles. I am reminded of a similar strategy in T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral. Eliot embodies his Christian viewpoint in two forms---in the life of an exemplary Christian martyr, and in the coming to saving faith of the chorus (identified as the poor women of Canterbury). In a parallel manner, the absurdist view of The Stranger resides in the central character and also in the society that he inhabits.
We get premonitions of absurdist society in this chapter. It is mainly situated in the behavior of the prosecutor and consists of the case that he builds against the accused. This theme first surfaces when the prosecutor asks Meursault why he sent his mother to a retirement home. Then Meursault's failure to weep at his mother's funeral is paraded before the jury as condemning evidence against the defendant. He had smoked at his mother's wake and drunk coffee. And that is only the beginning of absurdities, which culminate in the prosecutor's claim that Meursault was "already a criminal at heart" (Gilbert translation). There is a sense in which all people are murderers (or something else) at heart, but it is absurd to put a person on trial for that.
For reflection or discussion: Earlier I praised chapter three as a suspense story possessing one surprise after another; tracing the unpredictable logic of the prosecutor is one way to relish Camus's skill in creating a story of surprises. I also offered the view that by composing a story in which a man is on the verge of being convicted on irrelevant grounds is pressed in the service of asserting an absurdist view of the world; how does this work itself out as the chapter unfolds? What are the most absurd details in the prosecutor's statements?
Meursault in New Light
A great story keeps asking us to revise our understanding as the story unfolds. I believe that is true in regard to our assessment of Meursault, starting in chapter three. I cannot see that up to this point Meursault has any redeeming qualities. He is sensual, unfeeling, hedonistic, incapable of attaching normal human meaning to the events in his life, enslaved to immediate sensation, in many ways living a subhuman existence.
This indictment of Merusault continues in the trial scene of chapter three. I consider it to be the subordinate theme in the characterization of Meursault in this chapter, but we need to trace it as the chapter unfolds. Meursault remains abnormally sensitive to heat, and the familiar references to his inability to follow what is happening continue. Surely we believe that Meursault's quick dismissal of his mother's death on the weekend after he took up with Marie reflects deficient behavior.
But we come to sympathize with Meursault as we see him victimized by the bullying prosecutor. I believe Camus composed the chapter to generate sympathy for Meursault from start to finish. Virtually the first thing that Meursault learns is that "the court will dispatch your case as quickly as possible, as it isn't the most important one" (Gilbert translation). In keeping with what I said in an earlier posting about an incipient symbolism at work in the story, we can see here the belittling of the individual that Camus protests.
But the huge surge of sympathy that Camus generates for his protagonist comes when the prosecutor bases his case against Meursault on irrelevancies. One example out of many is the prosecutor's claim that when offered a cup of coffee at the funeral home Meursault should have refused it out of respect to the mother who brought him into the world.
Two other strands are introduced to make us sympathize with Meursault. One is the loyalty of friends who testify on his behalf. We instinctively side with them and against the prosecutor. Additionally, we can see that Meursault is being unfairly cast in a negative light by the prosecutor. As readers we were privy on the basis of part one of the novel to many of the events misrepresented by the prosecutor (and sometimes correctly presented by Meursault's friends on the witness stand).
For reflection or discussion: Make a mental or marginal note of the places in the chapter where you sympathize with Meursault. What do you think Camus intends with this shift in our attitude toward Meursault?
Comments:
June 26, 2012 at 02:44 AM
Some of the amazing figures of speech in this chapter:
"a small room that smelled of darkness"; "I felt as you do just after boarding a streetcar and you're conscious of all the people on the opposite seat staring at you in the hope of finding something in your appearance to amuse them"; "a plump, small man with huge black-rimmed glasses, who made me think of an overfed weasel"; "they all wore the same expression of slightly ironical indifference." The most outstanding sentence of the whole novel for me came in this chapter --- "I had a foolish desire to burst into tears. For the first time I'd realized how all these people loathed me." It seems to me that Meursault is Camus' head of our race. He represents the indifferent and the object of indifference, the one that hates and the object of hatred. He stands boldly before us and says, "You cast your vote, but remember when you cast your vote against me, you cast it against yourself. You are the one who hits Starbucks after the funeral; you are the one who reads the NY Times and sits with them in judgment, scorning those about whom you know little. When you bring the gavel down on me, you condemn yourself." And it seems to me Camus is right. And it seems to me he is wrong. He is right. We all stand with Meursault in the criminal dock. And Camus is wrong. Though we all feign taking our seat on the bench, there is only one there rightly. He is the one in red ---- one of us and not one of us. He can judge because He wept with those who wept and endured the contempt and plots of evil men even unto death. He is worthy to take His seat opposite Meursault and condemn him and all of us in Meursault.
June 25, 2012 at 09:12 AM
I'll be honest, but the description of Meursault given above, "sensual, unfeeling, hedonistic, incapable of attaching normal human meaning to the events in his life, enslaved to immediate sensation, in many ways living a subhuman existence" is a very apt description of my life in many ways. As a Christian I see much of myself in Meursault.
June 23, 2012 at 01:20 AM
Crutch, I agree that our response will be complicated and counterintuitive. In light of Dr. Ryken's observation, Camus' inconsistencies seem galling. "In keeping with what I said in an earlier posting about an incipient symbolism at work in the story, we can see here the belittling of the individual that Camus protests" --- Of all complaints leveled at society, Camus' Meursault has proven himself most guilty.How has Meursault himself regarded the individual in this novel, for example, his mother, his neighbor, his lover, the Moor mistress, the mistress's brother? Has Meursault himself shown the human compassion that Camus now demands from his court of readers? What would Meursault do if he was judge, not defendant? Perhaps we were never to feel esteem for Meursault. Meursault is society and victim in one, and thus the absurdity of it all. Camus indicts all including himself in one fell gavel.
June 22, 2012 at 01:45 PM
Three comments:
1. Again, Meursault sounds alienated from himself and from his environment in this chapter. He's not in touch with what is happening. He shows the same inability, as in Part 1, to discern important details from unimportant ones. Is this troubling to anyone?
2. The Prosecutor's role in this chapter puzzles me. If it is to create sympathy for Meursault, then that is complicated. Here's why: throughout Part 1, we readers have been taking note of and discussing Meursault's unsettling qualities, e.g., his social maladjustment, his inability to connect emotionally, and his odd passivity in the face of cruelty, yet it is these very qualities to which the Prosecutor draws attention as he builds his case. It seems to me that Camus has set a trap for us. He got us to be very uncomfortable with Meursault in Part 1, but now we are uncomfortable with someone who is trying to convict Meursault of murder based on the very qualities we too find troubling. So, on the one hand, we condemn Meursault morally, but on the other hand we may not want to condemn him legally, or at least not for the reasons the Prosecutor argues. What SHOULD we do with Meursault? I think Camus wants us to answer this question at a deeper level than just the particular story, i.e., in the particular time, place, and circumstances in the novel. He wants to know what should society do with someone like Meursault? In the great Coliseum of life, do we give him a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down?” And why?
3. I’ve been wondering about Meursault’s name. My French is pretty rusty, but I thought I remembered dimly a French word similar to Meursault’s name having to do with death. Here’s what I found: from the verb mourir (to die) we get meurtre (n. a murderer), meur (adj. murderous) and, perhaps most importantly, the statement “Je meurs” (I am dying). I wonder if this is akin to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s characters “Rev. Dimmesdale” and “Roger Chillingworth,” who so lived up to their names, C.S. Lewis’ “Uncle Screwtape” (which he said he used because it conjured up words like “thumbscrew” and “tapeworm”) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Prof. Moriarty” (death, mortality), Sherlock Holmes’ greatest enemy. If so, then Meursault’s very name sounds like someone connected to death, perhaps “dying one.” Does anyone find this interesting and/or convincing? Throughout Part 1, I would have described Meursault as “dead inside,” i.e., almost soulless. At the end of Part 1, he actually kills someone (the Arab). Then in Part 2, he is on trial for his life and… well, we’ll see.
June 21, 2012 at 10:03 AM
Dr. Ryken,
I must say that I finally agree with you about the sun & heat as an element of the story having more importance than merely description. Early in the book you mentioned it, and I was skeptical. In part 1, chapter 6, where the murder occurs, the sun is almost a person. You mentioned the possibility of the sun as referring to the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, as to the futility of "all things under the sun". Could it possibly instead refer to a notion of Fate, as in Mersault is being moved through life almost with no will of his own? It seemed at the murder as if he almost was moved to commit it, almost as if he had no choice, and here again in this chapter he is at the mercy of others.
Thanks, Tim
June 21, 2012 at 01:33 AM
I finished the book several weeks ago, but was wondering today what you would post about the absurdity of some of the items in the trial, specifically, about drinking coffee at his mother's wake. Is the emphasis here truly on the absurd? It seems if it were absurd, his attorney should have objected and made a point to say there was nothing wrong with drinking coffee and that the prosecutor had no relevant point. Since Mersault's attorney made no effort to object to the prosecutor's absurd claims, it almost seems that the whole of the legal characters are in cahoots in some foggy, silly, alternate universe. Or maybe that is the universe of Mersault's own foggy and detached mind. But I also wonder if I am ignorant of something cultural, like, maybe it IS wrong (even condemning?) to drink coffee at a wake in Algeria...?? (At every wake I have been to, it was criticized if there was not food and coffee.)
July 13, 2012 at 12:03 PM
Well, I definitely keep revising my opinion of Meursault! I actually surprised myself with how much sympathy I had for him especially when he said he felt like crying because everyone hated him.
I was actually selected to serve on a jury two days ago, so reading this chapter was personally very interesting to me.
I also thought it was interesting how much chance was brought up. It was really hammered home at the end of the chapter when he said something to the effect of it just being by chance that the day could end with someone being guilty of a crime and someone going to sleep innocently.
william brown
June 26, 2012 at 07:31 AM
From Steve Cornell's (Pastor in Millersville, Pennsylvania, USA) wonderful blog today.........
I copied his blog post from today (below) because it summarizes the problem posed by Camus's worldview and by this book. That is that no one does or can live by Camus' absurdist view of life.
Personally I do not think there can be any such thing as an absurdist hero, except perhaps in the sense that Lucifer is a hero amongst the devils. I think it's a grand cop out, a cowardly denial and rebellion against God.
While I fell genuine pity for Mersault, I also feel like the guy needs to take some responsibility, to buck up to reality, and to stop being such a spineless wimp.
Like Camus, Mersault continually comes up against his worldview when he finds unavoidable glimmers of meaning or purpose. This is one of the tensions created in the story. Whether Camus intends this or not, I do not know. It might be the same unrecognized or unacknowledged tension that Camus had to have experienced in his own life, which did not end well. This is what happens to any thinking man who stubbornly clings to his error and cannot alter his philosophy and reorient it toward reality.
One other area where I may differ from folks here is regarding the literary quality of this book. I just don't see it. I'm just thankful it's short, as it's not fun reading and at times borderline painful.
The trial scene is not suspenseful to me or well constructed. I've read so many far better: Dickens, Solzhenistsyn, Dumas, Hugo come to mind. I find Camus style dry and uninteresting. I think his allure might be more of a media/ secular elite creation that, like Sartre, remains fashionable amongst college students and professors.
Here's the blog post..........
A choice between two worldviews
Posted on June 26, 2012
Worldview 1.......
If there is no personal Creator, our existence is most certainly a cosmic accident. We exist by chance, not by design or purpose. We exist in a deterministic universe governed by raw natural selection. And, if this is an accurate accounting for our existence, several facts follow:
1. Notions of ultimate meaning are based on wishful thinking and irrational fantasy. Discussions about such notions are themselves unexpected. We should not expect people to look for meanings beyond survival in this life.
2. There is no ultimate morality; no right or wrong; no transcendent morality. On this version of reality, morals are simply matters of personal or societal opinion. The so-called problem of evil cannot be addressed and cannot (on rational grounds) really be called a problem. We should not expect people to pursue such things.
3. Death is both the irreversible cessation of organismic functioning and the irreversible loss of personhood. There is no hope of anything outside of this life. We should not expect people to seek the transcendent or eternal.
Problem: Humans everywhere throughout all of history know (intuitively) and live in a way contrary to this version of life.
Worldview 2.........
If, on the other hand, there is a Creator, a personal God who made us male and female in His own image, then at least three truths follow:
1. Life has value, meaning and dignity beyond the limitation of human opinion. We should expect to see people seeking value and meaning.
2. Personal identity, human freedom and responsibility become genuine markers of our existence. We have been endowed by our Creator with these qualities. We should expect to see people pursue these realities.
3. The transcendent (which we intuitively recognize) elevates us out of the despair of human relativism and the limitations of human inquiry. We should expect to see people reach toward the transcendent and eternal.
--Steve Cornell